[Danny]

thanx for the encouragement, BB! after this, there's only 3 more chapters to go...

CHAPTER 32

The Civic leaders charged me with rebellion. There was a small ‘Trial’, but since I had openly confessed before the interrogators had even started torturing me, and the ‘Jury’ was totally biased anyway, it was fairly pointless. I was sentenced to death, and my death was scheduled for the next morning. In the meantime, I was returned to the now empty communal cell, which had been my home for the past month, and promised a further interrogation later.

In near-darkness, I brooded over my life. Specifically, over the last three months, and the Madness that had gradually consumed me. The Killer had appeared for the first time, and had used me to kill twelve people, if you didn’t count the many who I had led to death in the revolt. It seemed like he had only taken control of me when it pleased him, but now I realised that he was there all of the time, that he was an integral part of me, of all of us. Really, he didn’t exist in the separate form in which I had always imagined him; my personification of the evil within me had just been an excuse, a justification. The truth was, I enjoyed killing. Not just killing for the sake of killing (except for one, the first, and the worst), but when I had to kill, I relished it. I revelled in it. I was no better than the slig who had tried to rape Hap: I gained pleasure from the suffering of others, even if they were ‘The Enemy’. None of them had really deserved death, and I had been fully aware of that. But I didn’t care. I could have knocked people unconscious, or merely broken their gun arms, but I had killed them, and enjoyed it. I felt unclean and better off dead.

“Deep Thoughts?”

I turned at the voice. It was very familiar, but in my state I couldn’t place it, especially in the darkness. A figure moved into the dim light cast by the window in the cell door.

“Yan? Is that you?”

The face smiled, humourlessly. “Did they torture you badly?”

“Where are the others?”

“Others?” Yan’s face screwed up in puzzlement. His voice was in a monotone, the emotionless drawl of those who know they are to die soon, and no longer care about anything.

“Where’s Vint?”

“Vint?” He seemed to be struggling to remember. “Oh yeah, he’s dead.”

“Dead?” I think I sounded surprised, although that was the answer I was really expecting.

“Well, he looked dead when they showed us his head.”

I paused, my head sinking onto my chest. “How did he die?”

“They tortured him to death. He refused to tell them who started the revolt.”

That did surprise me. That Vint would defend me with his life, even after the way I had treated him? My hollow confession seemed somehow ungrateful now.

“What about the others? What of Ulp and, err, Rixx?”

“They’re being tortured now. I expect they’re probably dead too now.”

“Olek?”

He looked at me. “Who?”

“The glukkon.”

“Oh, they shot him while we were running. Died painlessly, lucky bastard.”

“What about…” I dug for names. “Laur? And Snat?”

“Laur was the one with one eye, yeah? She was one of the few who made it to the gates.”

“She escaped?”

He shook his head. “No, they couldn’t open them, and they were all mown down by guards. I didn’t see Snat.”

I lay on the floor, dejectedly. So I’d killed them all. There were now over two hundred deaths on my conscience, as opposed to the twelve I had thought about before. And I had now accepted that I was totally responsible for my actions; I couldn’t blame any of them on any shadowy ‘Killer’ who took over my mind.

A strange clarity took me. My death seemed the easy way out, but it wouldn’t make anything better. How could I hope to redeem myself, and possibly repay society for what I had done, if I was dead? I realised that, in any case, I didn’t wish to die. I could reform; I had admitted my responsibility, which they always say is the first step. And there was so much that I could still do to redress the balance of good and evil in my soul. Only then could I rest. Vint had let himself die to try and protect me, and he wouldn’t have done that unless he saw something in me that needed to survive.

Yan was standing. “Looks like they’ve come to take us for more torture, before our execution. Get ready.”

Then I saw the full scale of the paradox I was trapped in: I couldn’t change my ways or make up for them if I was dead, but I was about to be executed, and I couldn’t escape unless I let what I had called ‘The Killer’ loose. The irony of this struck me, and I laughed with genuine mirth for the first time in a long while: in order to finally rid myself of my dark side, I would first have to use the full force of its power. I couldn’t kill the demon unless I unleashed it, unrestrained and unrepressed. I steeled myself for my final battle.